The American constitutions were to liberty, what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech, and practically construct them into syntax

Toleration is not the opposite of intoleration, but it is the counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms. The one assumes to itself the right of withholding liberty of conscience, and the other of granting it. The one is the pope, armed with fire and fagot, and the other is the pope selling or granting indulgences.

The Deist needs none of those tricks and shows called miracles to confirm his faith, for what can be a greater miracle than the creation itself, and his own existence?

Government is not a trade which any man or body of men has a right to set up and exercise for his own emolument, but is altogether a trust, in right of those by whom that trust is delegated, and by whom it is always resumable. It has of itself no rights; they are altogether duties.

The Allwise Creator hath been dishonored by being made the author of fable and the human mind degraded by believing it.

A little matter will move a party, but it must be something great that moves a nation.

Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.